The History of Your RASH

2015-1212 Saturday

onflict, love, intrigue, tension, unrequited love, unbridled lust, unscrupulous deception, unbelievable ignorance, uncanny intelligence, more intrique, and other stuff. That's whatThe RASH is all about. Here, you'll find all of this... and more. It's the seedy side of Gresham. It's the sunny side of Gresham. It's where you belong if you want to be plugged in to Gresham's past, present and future. There are many juicy tibits that comprise the foundation of Gresham, our fair city. We all love Gresham, don't we? Yes. We do. So, read on.

Today's Gresham is brilliant & beautiful. It's a wonderful place to live. But it wasn't always so Pollyanic (that's not a word). And The RASH, has its foundation in the very bloodlines that define Gresham's storied past.

What led us to here

So let's go back a few years, to the beginning. Let's take a gander, if you will; let's peel away the layers:

Gresham's celebrated past, and that of The RASH, began with the fathers and mothers (not to mention the childless) who settled here—those men and women who planted the seed that would one day become the beautiful city that is now 21st century Gresham.

The monolith that would become Portland was already becoming... well... a monolith, when Gresham decided it wanted to be an alternative to the highways, snobby neighborhoods, and skycrapers that would eventually come to identify Oregon's most populous city. Gresham knew it could do better. Even way back then. Thence, in 1905 Gresham incorporated. It became an actual city. The City of Gresham.

When Gresham incorportated, it requried a Zip Code® (for some reason). The founders were wise; they realized the intricacies of politics. The historical records show that on an early February morning in 1905, someone Googled "POSTMASTER GENERAL" and found out that the current US Postmaster General was a certain Walter Q. Gresham. This Googler quickly realized (after some late-night web-surfing) that WQ Gresham was the man to be wooed. Said Googler (who's progeny has asked to keep him anonymous, since, like, they don't want to impugn his late-night web-surfing proclivities) called for a meeting of the area's residents, in hopes that he'd be able to convince his friends that WQ Gresham was the man they needed to seduce if they had any hope in Hades of creating a real, bona fide city.

So, said late-night web surfer convinced the city's fathers to become kiss-ups. Said fathers became persuaded that the only way that this little Camp Town stopover on the way to Portland could become an actual city would be if they could get a Zip Code®. And who held the keys to Zip Codes®? Way back before they were even created?

You got it: W. Q. Gresham, Postmaster General.

Said founding fathers (there may have been a mother or two amongst them) then eagerly petitioned Postmaster WQ Gresham and said (basically) "If you let us be a city with a real live Post Office, we'll name said city after you. Okay?"

Amazingly, Walter QG liked the idea, and the city of 97030 (er, Gresham) was born. [Decades later, 97030 would give birth to a baby, 97080.]

Things have never been the same.

Yet the Curious Web Surfer is prolly now wondring: "WTF? When are we gonna get to the history about The RASH?"

Don't get your pants in a wad.

Here it comes:

Post Postmaster General general history of Gresham

Right after Gresham became an actual Postmaster General-approved city, a certain Herman Y. Articulator decided to settle in the area. Herm was a newspaper man, who had been quite successful with a few Midwest journalistic ventures, most notably:The Edna Post (now defunct), andThe Lone Star Tribune. Herman Articulator was the quintessential businessman. Soon after settling in Gresham, he decided to branch outside the domain of the Fourth Estate, and establish a couple of store-front businesses.

He was met with great success.

Some of Herman Articulator's more notable Gresham Businesses included: The Glass Butt (a leader in the area's fashion scene), Dea's Out & In (later bought by Manfred Dea, and his partners, Willamina In, and Bradley Out, and renamed Dea's In & Out), Gresham High School (later eminant-domained by the Gresham-Barlow School District and established as the area's first normal high school), Multnomah County Fairgrounds* (later eminant-domained by Multnomah County itself [who knew?] and then sold to some Californicating venture to build what is now Gresham Towne Fair). Hermy also did a few other smaller ventures (most noteably, GTE, which was bought out many years later by the Bell companies, and even later by AT&T, and some cellphone companies (whatever the hell THEY are) [Who knew THAT?]).

Yes, Mr. Articulator had much foresight. He somehow knew, back at the beginning of the 20th century, that there would someday be phones, and other stuff.

But then,Bob Review came along, riding his pinto over the Barlow Trail (did we mention that trail? It was an offshoot of the Oregon Trail). [Yeah, by the beginning of the 20th century, there were a few actual paved roads established, but Bob liked old-school stuff. It wouldn't be until the 1970s that Pintos would be seen everywhere on Oregon highways.] Well, Bob Review and Herman Articulator soon became besties. BFFs, if you will. And, perhaps, more. (We'll leave this up to the reader's fruitful imagination.) Mr. Review and Mr. Articulator quickly decided to merge (in so many ways) and soon... well, The Gresham Review-Articulator was born.

The GRA, as a weekly, was an immediate success. Businesses on Main Avenue** embraced Herm & Bob's new publication, hailing it as, "Gresham's most volatile rag." It was quickly established as the news source for all things Gresham, all things mid-Multnomah County, and all things cool. When social events were held, every Greshamite hoped to be captured in the cameras of the GRA photographers. Gresham's The Gresham Review-Articulator was the prime spot for the prime movers of Gresham.

Still more aspiring journalists

Enter: Gerald Herald. Jerry kinda slithered into town on the back of a strawberry-picker's hallock, one day. And when he arrived, he liked what he saw. Mr. Herald decided that Gresham would be his new home. Jerry liked reporting, and stuff, so he quickly established Gresham's first daily journalistic edifice, The Gresham Jerry Harry. In 1919 he went through a huge rebranding phase and gave his newspaper the new name of The Gresham Jerry Herald. But in 1923, after only four years using that masthead, Jerry rebranded once again (he was a fickle ol' soul), publishing his paper under the banner of The Gresham Harry. We must needs tip our hats to ol' Jerry, because he became the father of rebranding, even before it was a thing.

Well, Jerry still wasn't satisfied with his newspaper's name, so in 1924 (yeah, like, a year later) he decided to rename his tabloid The Gresham Herald, which not only incorporated his actual, formal, last name, but also seemed to fit more with the journalistic theme. Area residents also like it. They had been reading Sharon Nesbit's columns in The Outlook (these columns were WAY ahead of their time, mind you), and although that paper had a certain apeal, they wanted something new. After all, The Outlook had been established sometime in the Mesozoic Era, and had seemingly outlived most of its useful life. [Spoiler alert!: The Interwebs, and Bobby Pamplin swooped in and saved the day for The Outlook! Kinda.]

Yet, The Outrage (as many Gresham residents had become fond of tagging The Outlook) persisted. Indeed, it persists to this day (see the above spoiler alert).

So you gotta know that everyone was totally, like, blown-over when Chester Sentient strode into town and decided to settle in Gresham. You gotta know that. Totally blown-over. Chessy was a newspaperman, many times removed. His roots in the Fourth Estate went deep: Way back to, like, Benjamin Franklin's time, when newspapers were set by hand: Each letter and everything, was set by hand.

So Chessy was born & bred to be a newspaperman. Yet, he didn't know nuffin' 'bout writing.

The foundations of confluence

When Chester Sentient and Gerald Herald met up, it was... kismet (or something similar). They decided to form their own newspaper: The Sentient-Herald which, after a few years, became THE source for news, gossip and information regards Gresham and Eastmont. Everyone who was anyone read the SH. Really.

Well, FF a few decades, to the 1950s: It's after the War (it's actually after the next war too, and other wars too). Now everyone has a car in their one-car garage. Everyone has a phone in their kitchen. Everyone has a TV in their living room. In a few years, everyone will have two TVs in the house, and maybe even a second phone in their daughter's bedroom (princess style).

By now, the four newspapermen of the apocalypse—Chessy, Bob, Jerry, and Herm—had met many times at theM&M Restaurant (is that a website, or what?!) in downtown Gresham. To, you know, ruminate. To share old times. To plan their conquests.

They ate: Food.

They drank: Drink.

And they did some colaborating. (Don't tell the FDA—or is it the FCC... EPA? SEC? Oh, the FTC.)

Anyway, "Hey, Chessy," Gerald said, after the muscular, sexy, erotically enchanting, uber-masculine and alluring male M&M server had left, "What do you think about establishing an Internet rag of some kind?"

"Well, Ches, I'm jus' thinking about looking to the future. What if they someday invent an Internet?"

"Hmmm..." Chessy replied. "I don't think Gresham will welcome such a high-falootin' thing-a-ma-bob as that," he said, as he lifted his whiskey glass to his pouting lips and longingly watched the aforementioned muscular, buff server make his sexy way toward the M&M kitchen.

"Oh," Gerald smiled, "Methinks they will."

"You know," Bob Review said, "I've been thinking a lot about that. I've been wondering if maybe we should consider taking over TheOutrage. You have to know that someday they're gonna be bought out by that Pamplin Media conglomerate." Bob dropped his head and sulked. "It's just not right."

"Can that be done?" Herm asked. "Can they really do that?" His eyes darted to and fro (mostly fro) between his table-partners. "Can Pamplin really do that?"

Bob slowly raised his head and smiled. Then he tipped his hat to Herman and said, "Let's collaborate, and do it. Soon, The Outragewill be a bitter memory. We'll rule the (Gresham) world!"

"Okay," Bob sulked. He lifted a finger and motioned for the handsome M&M server to return.

Thence, after a generation or two of breeding and making progeny, Chessy, Bob, Jerry & Herm's descendents conflued and formed to become the venture what you're now reading: The Review-Articulator Sentient-Herald of Gresham. You are now the proud (hopefully) bearer of your very own RASH. Your mission is to spread your RASH amongst everyone you know: Greshamites, expat Greshamites, Oregonians of every stripe, and pretty-much every human you know who appreciates great—ahem—journalism.

So that's it. Gresham's journalistic history in a nutshell (or should we say, a filbert shell?). We hope you, the Curious Web Surfer, have been elucidated as to this important timeline. Our endeavor*** is to continue with the same kind of elucidation whenever we post a new something.